Former Counter Logic Gaming European League of Legends team joining new organization, confirming report from earlier this month.
The international eSports organization Evil Geniuses has officially announced that the former Counter Logic Gaming European League of Legends team will be joining the organization. This confirms a GameSpot report on the situation from January 3. Both parties have come to an agreement on terms that will reportedly make them the highest paid League of Legends team in the world.
The full five-man roster of Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis, Henrik "Froggen" Hansen, Peter "Yellowpete" Wüppen, Mitch "Krepo" Voorspoels and Mike "Wickd" Petersen have signed a one-year contract with the team. The DreamHack Summer champions have been mulling over their future these last few months, having serious discussions with Evil Geniuses and Curse, and the thought of starting their own team. The finalization of the deal comes after many months of back-and-forth of meetings between Evil Geniuses Owner Alex Garfield and the team, with Ellis at the helm of the talks. It is said to be the longest contract negotiation Evil Geniuses have ever had with a player or team.
Representatives from both sides told GameSpot that this was not the focal point of the deal, as several other factors such as security, longevity, team stability, streaming platform, and belief in each other were weighed with financials. Garfield met with Ellis over the course of six times throughout the past half-year, with an initial meeting shortly before Ellis and his team played in Korea's OGN The Champions League.
After narrowly losing to Azubu Frost in The Champions finals, Ellis and his team began to explore their options for 2013. Their contract with CLG was ending December 31, and the team knew of CLG's plans to partner with Azubu for the future. While the partnership presented opportunities for the team, they saw it more as a hindrance that relied too much on venture capital investment, and a lot of moving parts. The players felt CLG was not at the same level professionally as other established organizations, so came to a decision that without a major change in development, they would not extend their contracts into the new year.
Curse, with a European squad that has gone through a variety of roster changes lately, reportedly made a very strong offer to the former CLG team. The offer had the potential to yield more money through their own additional personal sponsorships, an opportunity not attainable through Evil Geniuses. Although Curse had on paper the better financial offer and a multiple large team houses to boot, Ellis felt there was too much of a reality TV atmosphere surrounding the team.
There were also said to be obligations from Curse of roughly double the number of hours they would have to stream compared to Evil Geniuses. Not only was this a large factor to the team for both fatigue and practice reasons, the team was said to have much preferred streaming on Twitch.tv rather than Own3d.tv, Evil Geniuses and Curse's streaming partners, respectively. As of a report two days ago, Own3d.tv may be shutting down in less than a week. Talks with Curse slowed down after this.
Negotiations came down to Evil Geniuses and the teams' personal aspirations of building an empire themselves. Worldwide fan favorites CLG and Team SoloMid were born this way, and just less than two weeks ago, their European rivals Alexey "Alex Ich" Ichetovkin and company left Moscow 5 to start their own journey in Gambit Gaming. Ellis was not fond of traditional eSports organizations, going through a rough four-month stint himself with SK Gaming under Captain Carlos "ocelote" Rodríguez at the end of 2011, seeing himself and Peterson leave for CLG Europe for the start of 2012.
Ellis had his own reservations against Evil Geniuses as well, with the team's StarCraft II players Greg "IdrA" Fields and Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson having unkind things to say about League of Legends. Last December, Garfield spoke to PCGamesN at the fifth IGN ProLeague event in Las Vegas, unsure of what the future may hold for EG in League of Legends. "Obviously, the numbers are impressive, and the passion of the community is impressive," Garfield said. "I think the challenge for me is just to find the right brand representatives for EG. So I've been perfectly happy to wait and sit on the sidelines and let some of those guys grow up a little bit."
Garfield said this, and at the same time knew this five-nation squad of five was the brand he was looking for. Garfield was said to have looked for two years for the right players to represent his brand in League of Legends, but was unsuccessful in his search until now. Even with Riot's Season 3 of the League Championship Series on deck with multi-million dollar prize pools and worldwide exposure, this was not reason enough to sign a team before the season starts. It was this team or no team for Evil Geniuses.
Garfield came to Ellis again at the MLG Winter Championships in Dallas, Texas, bringing a PowerPoint presentation with him for his whole team. Things went well, but both parties were still skeptical. Ellis and the team still wanted to try things out themselves, and Garfield was having last-minute reservations regarding Riot's plans for Season 3. The two met for the final time at IPL5 in Las Vegas, with both parties coming out of talks with their concerns addressed. Looking two, three years ahead was very important to the team, albeit only signing a one-year deal. The meeting helped Ellis realize it would be too difficult to run things themselves, and they would have a better opportunity to fulfill their goals with the organization.
Talks finalized the following two weeks after IPL5, with a verbal agreement set in mid-December. Riot VP of eSports Dustin Beck helped alleviate concerns for Garfield moving into Season 3. Ellis and the team are proud to be Evil Geniuses' first League of Legends team, and hope to bridge the gap between the other professional gaming communities.
The new Evil Geniuses League of Legends roster will play their first games under EG blue at the start of the Season 3 League Championships in Europe.
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